
A green-minded stimulus to save the economy from coronavirus? This group thinks it has the $2 trillion answers
If the pandemic-hit economy needs stimulus now, why not skip the patch-up job and rework it for the long haul?
That’s the aggressive view of several high-profile environmental advocates who have penned a detailed, eight-point $2 trillion proposal and posted it as an open letter to Congress: A Green Stimulus to Rebuild Our Economy. They want the prep work done now to make environmental projects shovel-ready when the worst of the coronavirus’s clampdown on the economy has passed. They opened the plan to virtual public comment.
The effort is not a complete rewrite of the Democratic-led Green New Deal framework of last year, a proposal meant to slow the effects of man-made climate change that has languished so far in a divided Congress. Instead, the new effort folds in expanded ideas from organizations, private companies and academics, and keeps a few of the proposals from the Democrats who have dropped out of the 2020 presidential contest, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren and known environmental champion Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington.